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Monthly Archives: January 2010

Department of Commerce Issues Report for Vice President’s Middle Class Task Force

News release: “The Commerce Department’s Economics and Statistics Administration today issued a new report for Vice President Biden’s Middle Class Task Force: Middle Class in America. The report, which identifies what it means to be middle class in America today, uses a host of measures to show that it is more difficult today to both… Continue Reading

EPA Strengthens Air Quality Standard for Nitrogen Dioxide

News release: “The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today announced a new national air quality standard for nitrogen dioxide (NO2). This new one-hour standard will protect millions of Americans from peak short-term exposures, which primarily occur near major roads. Short-term exposures to NO2 have been linked to impaired lung function and increased respiratory infections, especially in… Continue Reading

DHS OIG: Cargo Targeting and Examinations

DHS OIG-10-34 – Cargo Targeting and Examinations, January 2010. “U.S. Customs and Border Protection could improve its record retention processes to support decisions made to waive or inspect high-risk shipments. Of the 391 shipments identified as high-risk and selected for review, 57 did not have enough documentation to support the decisions that were made. Therefore,… Continue Reading

CRS – Federal Employees: Pay and Pension Increases Since 1969

CRS – Federal Employees: Pay and Pension Increases Since 1969, Patrick Purcell, Specialist in Income Security, January 20, 2010 “Congress has linked increases in federal pay to the ECI so that wages for federal employees will remain competitive with wages paid by firms in the private sector. Congress has linked COLAs for Social Security and… Continue Reading

CRS — Displacing Coal with Generation from Existing Natural Gas-Fired Power Plants

CRS – Displacing Coal with Generation from Existing Natural Gas-Fired Power Plants, Stan Mark Kaplan, Specialist in Energy and Environmental Policy, January 19, 2010 “Reducing carbon dioxide emissions from coal plants is a focus of many proposals for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. One option is to replace some coal power with natural gas generation, a… Continue Reading

New on LLRX.com – The Government Domain – Congressional Documents on FDsys: Advanced Techniques

The Government Domain – Congressional Documents on FDsys: Advanced Techniques – Following up on a previous column in which she introduced FDsys and explained the site’s simple search and navigation, this month Peggy Garvin provides an update and introduces more advanced search techniques for the congressional information available on FDsys. Continue Reading

How "Open Gov" Datasets Affect Parents and Consumers

News release: “Yesterday, Federal agencies answered the President’s call by democratizing hundreds of high-value datasets on every aspect of government operations. While this is meaningful for the technology community and transparency advocates who have been working on this issue for years, the data released will have direct impact on the daily lives of the American… Continue Reading

CRS Report on National Counterterrorism Center

January 15, 2010 – The National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC)–Responsibilities and Potential Congressional Concerns “The National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) was established in 2004 to ensure that information from any source about potential terrorist acts against the U.S. could be made available to analysts and that appropriate responses could be planned..As a component of the Office of… Continue Reading

Bureau of Justice Statistics: National Corrections Reporting Program

National Corrections Reporting Program, Thomas P. Bonczar, January 21, 2010 “Updates the electronic series of selected tables on most serious offense, sentence length, and time served of state prison admissions and releases and parole entries and discharges. The National Corrections Reporting Program collects demographic information, conviction offenses, sentence length, credited jail time, type of admission,… Continue Reading